NCAA Final: Cinderella vs. the Crusher : Georgetown Trounces St. John’s, Is a Win Away From Another Title

A star was borne off Saturday. He was Chris Mullin, removed from the arms of his St. John’s loved ones by Georgetown’s Hoyas, who took him out and fed him his lunch.

They entertained Mullin all evening and didn’t give him back until they had finished their 77-59 victory over what remained of the Redmen in the NCAA semifinals. Now only Big East rival Villanova can keep them from becoming the first repeat champion since UCLA in 1973.

Georgetown has already beaten Villanova twice this season. The Hoyas were a seven-point favorite Saturday and will probably be a double-figures favorite for Monday night’s final. There was once a Ming Dynasty, and a Ch’ing; get ready for the Ewing.

Georgetown tore apart the Redmen so methodically that it was easy to forget St. John’s was the nation’s second best team. The Redmen won 20 games in a row and ran No. 1 for half the season. They even beat Georgetown back in January, though they’ve been paying for it ever since. The Hoyas waffled them, 85-69, in Madison Square Garden, which is a St. John’s home court, and 92-80 on the same court in the Big East tournament.

Then came Saturday’s game. The Redmen have grown tired of calling for rematches.

“We have a good team,” St. John’s center Bill Wennington said. “They have a great team. We can play with the best teams. Unfortunately, we did.”

Mullin, averaging 25 points a game in the tournament, was held to 8 points. It was the first time in 101 games, since his freshman year, that he hadn’t scored in double figures.

It was worse than that. Mullin, who leads St. John’s in assists, had one assist and four turnovers. His teammate, forward Walter Berry, who’d had 31 assists in 34 games, beat Mullin’s Saturday assist total (by two).

How did Georgetown do it?

Let us count the ways:

(1) The Hoyas played a diamond-and-one zone defense, delegating David Wingate to follow Mullin everywhere, although timeout huddles and the St. John’s locker room were still off-limits. Wingate guarded Mullin in the backcourt, whether or not Mullin had the ball, and on out-of-bounds plays when Mullin was passing the ball in. In the St. John’s victory over the Hoyas, Mullin would throw the ball in against the Georgetown press, step in bounds, get the ball back and direct the action. Georgetown Coach John Thompson never let him do that again.

(2) Whenever Mullin got the ball near the basket, Georgetown teammates would double-team with Wingate.

(3) When Mullin was trying to run the baseline, which is the core of his movement without the ball, Patrick Ewing would step in his way and stay there.

(4) Wingate would be relieved occasionally by Perry McDonald and Bill Martin.

This is what they call a team effort. No player the size of the 6-6 Mullin may ever have gotten so much attention. Maybe Julius Erving did. Jerry West didn’t. Nor did Oscar Robertson.

“It gets frustrating,” Mullin said. “You kind of feel you’re just out there running around.”

The Redmen like Mullin to handle the ball as much as possible, but Saturday it was impossible. He didn’t touch the ball for the first 2:07, by which time Georgetown led, 6-2.

With 3:39 gone, Mullin still hadn’t taken a shot, the Hoyas were up, 10-2, and Coach Lou Carnesecca took a timeout. Maybe he wanted to gather his players around him to see if Mullin was really out there. Maybe he wanted to know if anyone had gotten a ransom note.

Mullin scored four points in the first half, although his teammates managed to cut Georgetown’s early 11-point lead down to 32-28.

He went the first 8:48 of the second half without a shot. By this time, he said, he was resigned to being a decoy and taking his defender out of the play.

Thompson was asked later what he’d told Wingate.

“I can’t say that in mixed company,” Thompson said, smiling. “David is very quick. Chris is very shrewd. I’ve said before, I think a lot of people in the country can shoot the basketball as well as Chris Mullin. But very few players in the country know how to get open like Chris does.”

So Mullin galloped all over the countryside with Wingate. That still left four Hoyas, including Ewing, to defend against four Redmen, including Berry, who by reputation is a great player-in-waiting. Berry carries the playground nickname the Truth, but Saturday, the Truth was hard to find.

The Truth almost blocked one of Ewing’s dunks, though. Berry was called for a foul, stared at Ewing and yelled a lot of stuff at him. Ewing didn’t react.

These are the new mellow Hoyas. There was a lot less rancor in this game than in previous encounters, which involved fighting, milling around, elbowing and the like.

The Hoyas had seemed about to slip back to late-season form. Ewing appeared at a New York press conference last week to accept a player-of-the-year award, accompanied by the team publicist, who explained that Ewing couldn’t answer questions on such topics as the upcoming St. John’s game, which was all anyone was talking about in New York. A television sportscaster put Ewing on camera, asked about St. John’s, was told by Ewing that he couldn’t get into that, congratulated Ewing on winning the award and ended the interview.

The same day, Thompson complained about racism in a Louisville Courier-Journal column, in a joke that was plainly aimed not at blacks but at the University of Kentucky’s hiring policies.

But once Thompson arrived, he quieted the multitudes. He told the press where his team was staying and practicing (Louisville). He brought Ewing to the pre-tournament press conference. Ewing talked openly and at length.

Thompson was asked about it later. He said he just hadn’t felt grouchy.

So here are your Hoyas, Paranoias no longer. This tournament is about to run out of Cinderellas. Monday night, pending a stay from the governor, Villanova steps up. What tortures can Georgetown have in store for the Wildcats?

Carnesecca was interrupted, while comparing Georgetown to the great teams in history, and was asked if the Wildcats have a chance.

“That’s why they’re going to play Monday night,” he said.

Tournament Notes Sure, Villanova has a chance . The Wildcats, with roughly the same starting lineup, beat Georgetown at Capital Centre last season and took the Hoyas into overtime before losing this season in the Spectrum. . . . John Thompson’s team isn’t the only intimidating thing about Georgetown. There is a theory that the coaching box was put in just to cut down on the terror caused by the 6-10, 310-pound Thompson roaming the sidelines. At the end of Saturday’s first half, Thompson went to mid-court to complain about a call, well beyond the boundary of the coaching box, and wasn’t given a technical foul. Then, when the basketball rolled by, Thompson picked it up, put it on his hip, and when another referee came over to retrieve it, berated him. Then Thompson handed the referee the ball, roughly. This official didn’t call anything, either.